A Unique Discovery

 I was never one of the "cool" kids in school.   When Elvis became popular, I liked Pat Boone.  When my mother bought me some new fashion, (in one case, pedal pushers), I put them away until the other girls started wearing them.  I wasn't exactly shy, but I suppose I preferred to adhere to what was more traditional.  I gradually gained more confidence over the years, but even today I suppose I am fairly traditional in my tastes...like my love for history and traditional art.  

Tom Waits

That may explain why I missed out on Tom Waits.  My best friend from childhood has always been much 'cooler' than me.  So, it isn't surprising that she was the one to post a quote by Tom Waits on face book that I found interesting.  This is the quote:  We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge, quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness.  We are monkeys with money and guns.  Who is this guy? I asked myself.   And, in contradiction to Waits' dislike of 'the weight of information,' I looked him up on the internet.  

I found that he has called himself a Folk Singer, a Blues Singer, and a Jazz Singer.  He is described as a musician, a composer, a songwriter, and an actor.  Wall Street Journal critic, Jim Fusilli, described him in 2008 as having a library of work "comparable to any song writers in pop today,"   Adding that he is "a keen sensitive and sympathetic chronicler of the adrift and downtrodden ...[who] creates 3-dimensial characters, who even in their confusion and despair, are capable of insight and starting points of view.  Their stories are accompanied by music that's unlike any other pop history."

That made me even more curious, so I set out to gain more information, apparently breaking another rule of Tom Waits, according to this quote: "Everything is explained now.  We live in an age when you say casually to somebody 'What's the story on that?' and they run to the computer and tell you within 5 seconds.  That's fine, but sometimes I'd just as soon continue wondering.  We have a deficit of wonder right now."  

Only a little embarrassed about defying Waits's dislike of searching for information, I found a website  to listen to his singing.   I was impressed by his musical talent on the keyboard, but his voice sounded like he had been eating rocks all of his life, so gravelly that the words of the song came out like rubble.   But here is the bottom line.  I disagree with much of what he sings and writes.  Sometimes it seems not to make any sense.  But sometimes what he has to say opens a new perspective to consider.  For instance, "The way you do anything is the way you do everything."  Or how about "Memories are like a train...you can see it getting smaller as it goes away..."

Sometimes his words are lyrics in a song.  Sometimes they are simply statements.  Some are long and some are short.  He is a guy with a wife and three kids who likes to keep his personal life separate.  He is a guy who has been around for a long time and doesn't really care if people like him or have never heard of him.  

As for me, I am glad I finally discovered him.  I enjoy reading what he writes more than listening to his songs, and I doubt that I will spend much more time searching for what he has to say, although I might enjoy stumbling on to some of his words.  However, I will share something from Tom Waits that made a lot of sense to me...although I would not have described it as he did.  It may make more sense to some of you with a little gray in your hair.  

Here it is.  "They have removed the struggle to find anything.  And therefore, there is no genuine sense of discovery.  Struggle is the first thing we know, getting along the birth canal, out in the world.  That's pretty basic.  Book store owners and record store owners used to be oracles, in that way; you'd go in this dusty old place and they might point you toward something that would change your life.  All that's gone."

I know what he means...at least what it means to me.  We valued the search more when we had to work for it.  We collected things that we wanted to keep forever because the discovery was precious.  We worked hard for certain things--with study or training and discipline, so that when we won the blue ribbon or the silver cup, we genuinely felt the thrill of victory that told us we deserved it because we had earned it.  And when we did not get the silver cup, we understood that we had done our best but someone else had been better.  Blue ribbons and silver cups for everyone have cheated us of the thrill of knowing we did our best, have stolen the thrill of finding a dusty old book in the back of a store that we had been searching for a very long time, and have left us with a diminishing since of value.    

I'm not so sure about the 'birth canal stuff,' but thank you Tom Waits for sharing your unique way of helping us view the world from a different perspective.